Welcome!

Welcome to Special Insights! This is an exciting post for me. I've been wanting to start a blog like this for awhile now but am just finally getting around to it. As it says in the about me section, I have a beautiful daughter, Kaia, 18 months old now, with special needs. She has a rare chromosomal syndrome called 22q13 deletion, aka Phelan-McDermid syndrome, that causes global developmental delay. Kaia was also born with a cleft lip and palate, and a multicystic kidney. At 11 months age, she was also diagnosed with dysphagia (swallowing difficulties). On this blog I hope to document her amazing progress, to a couple ends. One is selfish, to keep a journal of sorts of her early years; another is to communicate in an efficient manner all that is new in her world to those family and friends who are interested; and the last is to provide support and encouragement to, and to connect with, other families with kids with special needs. The first several months of the blog I intend to flashback a bit in order to record some of her earlier life. I will try to be as honest as I can about the joys and challenges of parenting a child with special needs.

We have something incredibly exciting to report today: Kaia is independently choosing to walk to her chosen destinations instead of crawling. This is more than the steps she has taken over the past couple months. Several times today she would go from one supported standing position to another via independent steps; usually by 2 or 3 steps. We weren't prompting or enticing her to do so at all; she just chose to do this. Later in the day we held a bowl with a block in it in front of her and she would go from a standing still position, take a few steps, stop and balance, then take a few more steps. It was great fun to have her walk around the kitchen this way. Very, very exciting. Of course after all that excitement I felt a renewed commitment to have her work on her trunk strength (her PT says this is key to her being able to walk well independently) so we put her on the ball and blew bubbles at her. She again approximated saying bubbles. (She had done that for the first time earlier this week). SO much new stuff today!

She is also walking much better with one hand held. She gets very impatient and intolerant of sitting in the cart while shopping. Today we were at Target, though, and instead of having her push the shopping cart, which she loves to do, I had her walk beside me holding one hand. The carts there are not so easy for her to hold into in order to push. I think she was frustrated that she couldn't push the cart and that I just wouldn't carry her (that's what I most often end up doing - and man, is she getting heavy), but she walked that way up and down a couple of the short toy aisles with one hand held. A few months ago she would just fall to the side almost immediately when we tried to have her walk with one hand held instead of both hands held. I can really see the progress when I think about that.

Kaia is also getting closer to being able to stand from on the floor. She will now do "down dog" yoga pose upon a verbal prompt and even just when she feels like it, and just needs physical help shifting her weight back onto her heels to stand. She seems so proud when she does it.

Also new this week: Kaia can consistently find her own belly button with a verbal prompt (she has been fascinated with ours for a couple weeks now); and she is babbling again after several months lapsed. She is also squatting much more from a supported standing position (holding on to the table with one hand) while she squats to retrieve an object on the floor and return it to the table with the other hand.